AZIO Says Its Atlas One Texas Campus Will Run Off the ERCOT Grid Entirely

AZIO AI Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: AZIO) confirmed Tuesday that Atlas One, the first campus in its Project Atlas program in Live Oak County, Texas, is designed to run fully off the ERCOT grid, with no pending ERCOT large-load interconnection request. The Houston-dateline announcement came as Texas tightens the path onto its grid: according to the Office of the Governor, cited in the company's release, ERCOT is weighing roughly 474 gigawatts of connection requests - more than five times the state's record peak demand - and about 90 percent of that queue is data centers.

The rules around those requests are new. Senate Bill 6 (2025) set standards for loads of 75 megawatts and up, including study fees, financial-commitment requirements, and disclosure of on-site backup generation, and 2026 Public Utility Commission of Texas rules put the law into effect. In June, the governor directed the PUCT to make data centers pay all of their own electric infrastructure costs, and in August he ordered a verification audit before any data center advances through ERCOT interconnection; ERCOT paused its first Batch Zero large-load study to comply, and its November 5 update showed verification still under way, with a report due to the PUCT on December 10.

Under the Project Atlas plan, power is generated on site, from natural gas, next to the compute it serves, and generation for each phase will go through its own air authorization before it is built. “Texas is not turning against data centers. It is turning against data centers that expect everyone else to carry their costs and their risk,” said Elgin Tracy, the company's chief operating officer. “We are not waiting in a 474-gigawatt line, and we are not asking Texas ratepayers to fund a new substation.”

The company was plain about what is not done. Atlas One is anchored by a signed 10-megawatt infrastructure hosting agreement with Power Champion at $150 per kilowatt per month, but no capacity under that agreement has been energized, and power generation at the site remains subject to air authorizations and other permits that have not all been obtained. AZIO said it is building toward a planned 11-megawatt Phase One in practical blocks of work.